Budapest Tournament 2016

Congratulations to Lokomotive Wien on reaching the 3rd place in the 7th Annual Budapest Tournament on September 10th.

The 3rd/4th place play off saw a lot of scores from a strong Viennese team that didn't leave the Islanders any chance.

Congratulations also to Karin 1 for becoming female MVP of the tournament.

Full results:

1 Touch Stockholm

2 Darvak

3 Lokomotive Wien

4 Budapest Islanders

First Round of CETL 2016 in Budapest

Tournament season is starting again - and the fight for the Ashes between Prague, Budapest and Vienna. The first round of the Central European Touch League (CETL) will take place
on April 2 in Budapest.

This will be the first of three legs - the next dates are on May 28 in Neusiedl am See and June 14 in Prague. The winner will
get the Ashes. They are the remains of the Wooden Spoon, which was won by the Czech-Hungarian-Austrian Barbarians team in the first European Touch Championships 2008.

The 'Summer Social' is a 4-a-side tournament to promote and introduce Touch to new players. Everyone is welcome to come along and should feel
encouraged to bring along friends, family and colleagues who haven't played before.

Register by signing up at the Doodle http://doodle.com/ike4wkxeneh2ithv
or write to us directlyWhen: Sunday, 12th July, approx. 13:00 - 16:00Where: Prater, JesuitenwieseRules: teams will be drawn on site and we will spread the rookies among the teams we have; 4-6 players per team; two 5-minutes halves, about 5-6 games per team;

Timetable:
13:00-13:30 Short introduction to Touch for rookies
13:30-16:00 Games (one game is only 10 min)
16:00 Prize giving, Picknick & drinks afterwards!

How to get to Prater (Jesuitenwiese)

Take Tram 1 or Bus 4A until "Wittelbachstrasse" then walk right into the Prater along the walking road. You'll find us about 200m along the way opposite of
the childrens playground.

Brett Barclay Cup (formerly ACC Cup) was held in memory of our friend and founder of ACC Touch Brett Barclay who lost his fight to cancer two years ago. Not only Brett but also the sun was
shining on us that day. In perfect weather conditions, Budapest Islanders, Prague Pillagers, Vet’s Warriors and Lokomotive Wien were fighting not only for the title “Brett Barclay Cup Champion
2014” but also for the crown (or rather the Ashes) of the Central European Touch League (CETL).

In a very tight final, Prague Pillagers beat Budapest Islanders and won this year's Brett Barclay Cup. In the 3rd/4th place play-off Lokomotive Wien beat Vet's Warriors and became Central
European Touch Champions 2014.

The Touch European Championships 2014 will start on thurday 7th August in Swansea, Wales. The tournament will welcome 16 nations, 52 teams, and 72 international referees. Teams from all over
Europe converge at Swansea to battle out in Mixed, Women's, Men's and Senior categories. The event also includes the first ever International Under 18 Mixed Tournament in Europe.
Five of our own are also representing Austria in Swansea:
- Evelyn and Andreas who representing Austria as referees,
- Mimi, Karin 2 and Isabel are working as volunteers at the event and
- Isabel is attending the official meetings of FIT/EFT as vice president of Touch Austria

Touch Austria wishes them many great experiences at the biggest and most professional Touch European Championships of all times.Link to Euros 2014 match results:
You can keep up with the results of the Euros 2014 games here

On what might have been
the coldest day of Spring in 2014 – May 3rd – the 6th International Vienna Touch Tournament took place in Austria. Six teams and twelve full-time referees braved the elements and
froze through a fun and eventful day in Vienna. Tumeke from England - who remained unbeaten in the tournament - claimed the trophy in the final against the Buda-Mix Team from
Hungary.

The 3rd/4th place play off was won by the hosts - Lokomotive Vienna - over their long-time sparring partner, Touch Muenchen. A highlight of the tournament was a match
up between the 12 full-time referees vs. the Vienna A-Team (with supporters) in the fight for the wooden spoon – bravely refereed by Tom from Tumeke and Randy from Touch Muenchen. In a very
unexpected turn of events the Referees Team did manage to beat a shocked A-Team, claiming fifth place in the tournament.

Despite the icy breeze it was a great atmosphere & the games were played in a competitive but friendly spirit which left
all teams and referees satisfied.

The referees were guided through the tournament by referee coaches Derek Fisher and Nick Richardson. and by the end of the
day two badge upgrades were awarded.

After a successful day
Touch Austria is now looking forward to seeing many old and new guests in Vienna next spring!

This tournament has been central in the developing Central Europe Touch region as a place to meet, play each other & develop contacts. On top of that we've had visiting teams from Scotland,
France and even Egyp coming in the past.

The event will take place at Purkersdorf/Vienna. A Touch Bus for players will leave from subway station Hütteldorf (U4) in the morning and go right to the after party location in
the evening. We recommend players to book accomodation close to Westbahnhof or Karlplatz.

The annual general meeting will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 27th, 20.00 at Stadtbrauerei (1010, Vienna).

Touch is a joint venture in Austria and we all have both the opportunity and obligation of shaping it together.

At this meeting we will put the official positions to a vote, discuss the President's , the Financial and the National Director of Referees report. Furthermore we want to encourage open
discussions about opportunities, development and other topics important for Touch Austria.

Every full member of Touch Austria is invited to come, has the right to vote at the AGM (or the electronic vote) and is eligable to be voted into one of the official positions.

Congrats to Brussels Celtics for winning the men's and women's open divisions! Thanks to all the teams joining us for a great
day of Touch!! For more pictures and impressions from BBC Cup 2013 click here!

With great sadness we have heard the news about the passing of F.I.T. Secretary General Dennis Coffey.

Dennis was one of the founding figures behind Touch. 35 years ago he started building up Touch in Australia and developed it
from park level fun to a professionally run sport. He was central in the development of Touch rules and gameplay, shaping the sport into the game we love to play now.

Dennis travelled around the globe to develop Touch outside of Australia and
New Zealand. Some of us had the honour to participate at the first ever Level 1 Coaching Course of mainland Europe, which took place in Munich, 2008.

Dennis also visited Vienna a couple of times to support us in the development of Touch in Austria. He was a driving force
behind the efforts to reach F.I.T. membership, which lead the foundation of Touch Austria as association. Without this we would not be able to participate at the Euros, World Cup or Mainland Cup.
"DC" always saw the potential of Touch in Austria and pushed us forward to where we are now.

Dennis at the Level 1 Coaching Course in Vienna, 2009

Dennis teaching the boys a lesson

It was always an absolute pleasure to talk about Touch with DC, his experience, knowledge and vision of the sport was truly
amazing.

We are very thankful to him for all the inspiration and motivation he brought to us, helping us to grow and florish. We owe
him a great deal!

Our deepest condolences go to his wife Carol and his family. Our thoughts in this difficult time are with
them.

Only six more days until Brett Barclay Cup 2013!! For the fourth time this tournament will take place at Austrian Cricket
Club in Vienna on September 7th. Ten teams altogether will compete in the women's and the men's division.

In the women's division Touch Austria Alpinkatzen will try to defend their title while the men's division will bring along a new champion since Galaxy
London
could unfortunatly not make it to Vienna this year.

The Lokomotive from Wien as usual departed Vienna the day before the tournament. This gave us time to do some pre-tournament activities on Friday.

After a rather short night – for a few of us at least – we made our way to the fields. Not everyone made it in time to our meeting point at 8:45....read more

Finally, all of us were at the fields and warmed up for our first game. Since most of us hadn’t done any sports since Mainland Cup, the first game was a bit of a fitness shocker, Fortunately for
us, the other team wasn’t quite awake yet at too and had only six players.

The team from the Netherlands was up next. Our team wasn’t used to playing against a team with structured drives and a well-coordinated attack. We lost this one even though the almighty Luki was
on top form. Our last game in the group stage was against our hosts, Budapest Islanders. A victory against them brought us to the semi-finals of the Cup.

In the semis, our favourite archenemy, Touch Munich, smashed us with straight, fast, well-structured and organised drives and sent us to the small final where we faced The Hague. They also had
quite fast drives and very good steppers and we started to feel even more strongly that we hadn’t done any sports or fitness training since Mainland Cup one and a half months ago. Even though we
lost the small final we won back the Central European Touch Ashes (yeah!) for finishing as the best Central European team (awesome!) so there was enough reason to celebrate!

On Sunday evening after visiting the thermal pools or hitting town to do some sightseeing, the victorious Lokomotive returned to Wien to prepare mentally and physically for the Brett Barclay Cup
on September 7th.

Special thanks to:

Ben, Gabi & the rest of the Budapest crew - for organising such a cool tournament!

Joshi - for joining the team last minute and giving everything on & off the pitch

Livia - for overcoming her fears and playing at her first tournament just months after starting to play Touch

Tini - for scoring on the 5m line. Again.

Adi - for being a great player on Saturday & a great tourist guide on Sunday

Hans - for his Matrix-like touchdowns

Hubert - for entertaining us with stories of his life

Luki - for coaching us throughout the day

Frank - for being Isi's special friend

Stefan - for being our full-time photographer & making our team look so much more professional than the others

Touch Austria is looking for non-playing volunteers to help out with different tasks at the tournament and is kindly asking it's members and affiliates aswell as their families,
friends and significant others to help out in the time between 12th-14th July.

Touch Austria is getting ready, the squads are elected and the last few training sessions have started. Also the organization of the event is reaching it’s
final stage and we are now looking for volunteers to help out with local preparations and tasks in the time between
Fri 12th – Sun 14th July.

We need about 10-15 persons for all kinds of different stuff including:

time keeping

presentations

DJ

attendants

setting up tents

making lines

waste disposal

selling merchandize

photographers

videos of finals

drivers for transport

updating website/FB

& more to come!

The more volunteers we have, the fewer the task one person has to take over, also the tasks could be shared with others which is probably much more
entertaining for everyone.

Therefore we kindly ask all Austrian active or inactive Touch players and affiliates, Mainland Cup players or not, to help us out. Please ask your friends,
family or significant others if they had time to help us out with any of these tasks.

We will say goodbye to Siva this Monday May 20th at 10:30 at ACC grounds. At about 13:30 there will be a Touch game in Sivas memory. Training in the evening is
cancelled!

All Touch players are cordially invited to join, no matter if they be new or old, active or inactive, if they been close friends to Siva or just had heard from him in this sad moment.

After a religous ceremony by the Sri Lankean community, there will be a cricket match, by the ACC youth, followed by a Touch game later on in honor of Siva at around 13-14:00.

We would like to appear as a group for the ceremony, so please bring your ACC jersey if you have one or just a simple yellow shirt. Some ACC jerseys will also be provided at the grounds. Since it
is a religous ceremony we would recommend you all to wear long trousers in the morning, and change into your playing shorts afterwards.

We are very sad to inform you that our dear friend Siva Nadarajah passed
away a few days ago.To us he was not only a great teacher and
generous host, but most of all a friend for the whole community in Austria and everybody who has ever met him will miss him. Our thoughts are with his family.

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On Monday (May 20th) at 10:30 the Sri Lankan community wil perform a religious memorial service at the ACC ground and the whole Touch community is invited to attend.

On Saturday (May 25h) from 9-11:00 you can also say goodbye to Siva at the Aufbahrungshalle, Friedhof Oberlaa, Friedhofstrasse 33, 1100 Wien

Read more...

We hope that many of you will have time to join us to say our good byes as Touch Austria.

Yesterday new and old players, active and inactive members of Touch Austria gathered at the ACC to say good bye to Siva as a group. After some touching words by Phil we cheered to Siva one last
time. Harlan then invited us in a symbolic gesture to take a few minutes time and pick some weeds off Siva's beloved and most carefully tended lawn. With so many hands we managed to fill up to
big bags full of dandelions and weeds. The atmossphere was silent and reflective but lively. Then we threw some friendly balls, played Touch in Siva's spirit and had beers afterwards. That's the
way he always wanted us to do it.

In case you missed yesterday there are two more chances to say goodbye to Siva, You can join us on Monday (May 20th) at ACC for a Sri Lankan goodbye ceremony or on Saturday (May 25th) at 9:00 at
the Friedhof Oberlaa.